Wasting
by hts911
Summary: This sickness consumed me. This sickness wasted me, chewed me up, and spat me back out, but I refuse to give. Life in my eyes is practically over. So why won't he let me go?


**AN: This is actually just a random idea that I had. I will admit that it is sort of morbid depressing, but if there is anything you don't understand after you've read the story, read the notes on the bottom and it should make more sense.  
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.**

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_'How are you?'_

It is the question everyone was asking. _'How are you, Tatsuki? Are you feeling alright?'_ How am I supposed to feel? I'm dying and there is nothing I can do to stop it. It's not as if I can just wish away the sickness and make it as if all of this agony had never happened to me. I wish I could, but I can't so I have to deal with the fact that I am going to waste away soon.

What am I supposed to say? My eyes burn whenever faced with the slightest amount of light? I can't do anything without having to suffer through excruciating pain? That I can't stand the fact that just being in this state is hurting every single person who has ever cared for me?

I feel crowded, corned. People keep coming and going, stopping by to be witness to me in all my waning glory. They just want to get one last good look at me before I'm gone for good and there is no possible way I could come back. I want them to leave too. Just leave me to waste away in my own silent agony. I would tell them to leave, but any idiot could guess what it feels like to get to spend some time with a person before you know all their short time is lost. _They _want it. _I_ want it. I _don't_ want it_. I don't know what I want_.

They come and hug me, hold my hand, offering me contact that I don't even believe I desire. My body's become frail, emaciated due to disease and I don't want anyone to know I'm not myself anymore. _I _don't want to believe I'm not myself anymore. No more muscle, no more bone, I've just become a lifeless shell of what was.

Orihime visits me, she comes nearly every day. I realize I hurt her just by allowing her to see me like this. She cries when she thinks I'm sleeping. She cries because she knows I'm so broken that even she can't fix me. And I open my eyes and watch her try to make the tears disappear, even though we both know she can't. And I begin to feel even worse. I tell her not to waste her tears on me. And she cries even harder. And I don't want her to see me like this, yet I can't find the words to tell her to leave me be.

She rambles for half an hour about everything I'm missing at school. It's the same old things happening as always and I'm a mixture of grateful and disappointed when I realize that everyone can properly function without me there. I could just slip away at any given moment and nothing would change in the world around me. I'm so confused by these feelings because I don't want, nor do I expect, people to spend their lives grieving over the loss of mine, but I feel as if when I'm gone it will be as if I was never even here. Is my life really that insignificant? Do I _want _it to be?

These troubling emotions almost cause me to ask Orihime to stop speaking, but I don't think I want her to. Some part of me wishes to die alone, while another just wishes to live on.

Some of the words she says troubles me, though. The way she keeps using future tense on things she would like for us to do together. No 'ifs' or 'I wish', just _'when.'_ We both know that none of these things will ever happen. I'm not going to live much longer, and if by chance I do live longer than expectations, there is no way that I'm going to get better. And it hurts so intensely, prickling at my heart like one thousand needles pushing deeper into my chest. Orihime must notice something is up, for she takes her leave telling me I must be tired.

She stands to leave, giving me a phony smile that my heart won't even allow am imitation of. Neither of us say goodbye, because the pain from it would be insufferable. The word is so much difficult to say when it is actually true.

I'm not sure when I fell asleep, but when I wake up, its night out. Ever since I became sick this has been happening to me. I fall asleep and have no memory of ever being tired, or else I'm tired so often I can't even separate the feeling of it. Then I wake up with the terrifying thought of unseen death creeping up on me. So, I end up staring wildly paranoid around the room in a cold sweat, checking for a pulse that had never left just to be sure that I've yet to die.

In the corner of the room rests a man, tall with long red hair in a loose black uniform. He is sleeping, a sword next to him as if to protect him from the dangers of the night. I want to say something, anything despite the fact that I have no idea of what I wish for him to do. _Leave? Stay? Talk?_ I'm just not sure.

Slowly, I work myself into a sitting position, listening to the sound of the soft creaking of my bones that everyone keeps telling me is all in my head. My muscles disagree with my wishes and don't want to cooperate, yet I force them into submission willing to face the pain that comes with it. And when I'm finally upright my body obviously does not want to do much else. I know that I can still go further, move further but the desire is not strong enough.

My throat is dry, I notice, momentarily forgetting about the strange man in the room and redirecting my attention on thoughts of water. As always, there is a cup on my nightstand, but the nurse who placed it there must be new, due to the fact that she didn't place it close enough to me. I turn, reaching forward in my slow speed and just as my fingers make contact with the cold glass, I hear the sound of displaced air ringing in my ears.

In a flash, the man once in the corner is by my side, taking the cup into his hands. He gives me an easy grin before holding the glass to my mouth. I let him help me drink until my hands are able to hold the cup on their own. I let the effects of the liquid make their way through my body and feel my strength returning to me.

"Took you long enough," he snorts. "I thought you'd never wake up."

I give him a glare, not willing to allow him to know that I was having that exact fear, and cautiously make my way out of the bed. "Do us both a favor, Renji," I begin, testing my balance on the ground below my feet, "and shut the hell up." I ball my hands up into fists and release them, feeling my body move in ways the sickness normally wouldn't allow. I'm nowhere near as strong as I once was, but right now I'm grateful just to even be able to move easy, no matter the consequences.

Renji smirks before hopping out the open window, landing in the air a foot below. "You comin'?" he calls over his shoulder.

"Give me a minute," I tell him, slipping a light dress over my head. I finish him and climb through the window and onto his back, once again wishing that I could just wear pants instead of the dress. But that's just another memory of my distant past when changing clothes wasn't enough to exhaust my body of all its energy.

_'You're going to die soon, Tatsuki.'_

Even now when I am 'better', my mind won't allow me to forget that. Fresh air flows past me, basking me in its freedom, yet I cannot feel anything but constriction. My arms tighten around Renji's neck but I can't do anything to control them. I can't breathe, _can't think_, I can only focus on the voices bouncing around in my head, antagonizing me with the fact that my imminent death is not far away. I can't stay in this state forever. I can't escape the terror that is to come.

The scenery in front of me begins to swirl together, meshing into an all too consuming grey. The panic sets in and I wonder if I am screaming or not. Spasms rake through my body and the world is out to devour me. And then it all stops.

Suddenly, I find myself in the grass gazing at the moon, mouth open taking in short, labored breaths with a raging Renji shaking me, telling me to snap out of it. The world settles into perspective and I tell myself that I'm ok, that I'm perfectly fine. My eyes close as I gently let my breathing even out. I bask in the feel of the summer night breeze against my heated skin. I know that this is my last. I can feel death's clutches wrapping around me and I know tonight is my last night on Earth.

I don't tell Renji that I'm dying, and I'm sure he already knows. Right now I'm exactly where I want to be. Just enjoying myself as much as possible and not having to worry about anything else.

There are no stuffy hospitals with sterile white walls that suffocate me with their echoing light. The voices, the light shows, the _psychosis, _none of it ever happened. I don't need help eating and there are no nurses who pump me up full of crap that never helped me in the first place.

There are no crying loved ones. My mother never broke into tears over my body once she realized how sick I had become. My father never turned a blind eye and tried to act as if nothing had changed. And most importantly, I never made Orihime sit through the day in, day out torture of watching me get closer and closer to the edge of death. I can just forget about it all and focus on the here and now.

I have no real last requests or mistakes that I want to fulfill. I don't plan on sitting around playing coulda' woulda' shoulda' with myself. The only thing I really wish I could be able to do was _live._ Yeah, that's what I want, life. I want to live. I want to live. I want to _live._ And yet it is the only thing impossible for me to have.

My heart beats loudly in my ears and I open my eyes wanting to see the endless sky, but I can't make it out because everything is blurry. At first I'm convinced that I'm so much closer to death than had originally thought, until I feel the wetness rolling down my cheeks. I'm crying. For the first time since I've discovered that I had no chance of living, I'm crying. I was always the strong one, never shedding a tear at any of the pain, emotional or physical and yet, here I am right now bawling my eyes out. Why? Why? Why now? I don't even notice the words had slipped past my lips until I hear Renji answer.

"Because you're dying," he answers. "Because you're dying and you're scared." I can't tell if he's shaking or if it's just my eyes.

I feel his hand slip into mine, holding on as if it was his lifeline.

"Why are you doing this for me?" I choke out. "You were the one who told me that when I died I was going to forget this life. _So why_?"

He is silent for a moment before answering. "I honestly don't know," he says and I can feel my eyes begin to shut. I can't fight it. I'm tired of fighting it.

"I don't think I want to forget," I whisper, feeling my lungs running out of breathe, all my defenses down for once.

"That's good…because I don't think I want you to forget either."

His words ring in my ears like church bells, loud and constant until they fade away into nothing. And all I can think is that Renji is a fucking idiot for trying to hold onto something that was already wasting away. And even though I never said it to him, I guess I kind of love him for it.

I died in a park, my body hyped up on drugs that couldn't ever save me in the long run. I died smiling, but unsure to whether I was happy or not. I died when I had still wanted to live. I died when there were things I had still wanted to hold onto. Dying isn't the hard part. The most painful and challenging part of dying is leaving everything you'd come to love when alive.

Lucky for me, what I loved the most wasn't anything too hard to find again.

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**AN: So the idea is that for a while since she's been sick, Renji's been visiting her in the hospital, slipping her some sort of medicine that takes away the effect of her sickness for a while. At some point in time he slipped it into her water, which is a fact that she is very much aware of.  
So...yeah, tell me what you think.**


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